Antenna day!

The general public has no idea what it takes to transmit those pretty pictures to their TV sets. Why should they? Most have never been inside a TV station and their only connection with a TV station is during a personality visit or promotional appearance of a station personality. It is for that reason that I LOVE my job as I do. If it were easy, EVERYONE would be doing it!! It is also one of the reasons I decided to start blogging. It isn't as easy as it looks.

Take this past week. As some people know, at "El Ocho" (as Lenslinger calls it) we are building a new transmission facility. That means new building, new tower, new transmitters, and new antennas. We have been fighting the state, the federal government commandeering our building material for the Gulf Coast rebuild and the usual contractor woes (thank goodness we have a good contractor who has helped us along and smooth the bumps). But we can now see the light at the end of the tunnel is not a train coming but the sunlight. We had the new antennas delivered.

New antennas awaiting unloading-11/4/2005

These puppies are LARGE. The antenna that will go on the top of the tower is 74 feet long and weighs in at 13,000 pounds. The top antenna comes in two sizes. It starts out at 4 foot in diameter for about a quarter of the distance, drops to 2 feet in diameter for about half the distance and then goes back to 4 feet in diameter for the remainder quarter.

The second largest antenna is about 60 feet long but is side mounted on the tower and doesn't need the massive steel to hold it up since the tower supports the antenna and it can weigh in at a mere 1350 pounds. It is only 2 feet in diameter.

It was an event when the antennas arrived. Because of the length, it took a special permit to transport the antennas from the factory at Raymond, Maine. The permit required that the trucks had to run on back roads and daylight hours with escorts. They made it in two days and just did get to the site before sundown. When they did arrive, the building workers and the neighbors all came out to check out these long orange metal things that was blocking the road as we were getting them on to the site. Because of the time of day the tower crew decided to off load them the next morning.

Now if the wind will cooperate this coming week, we can get the antennas mounted and a very major milestone will be met. Just got 4 more major milestones to go!